Days on Market (DOM)

Days On Market

Every home for sale has a statistic called “Days on the Market”. Our MLS system abbreviates this to DOM. Exactly what does this mean?

For a home with an ‘Active’ status, that of course means the number of days the home has been listed for sale — this time! Many times a home will expire and be relisted, getting a new MLS number and a days-on-market reset to zero.

For a home with a ‘Closed’ status (sold) the days-on-market is the number of days that the home was in an ‘Active’ status. In other words, when the home went under contract, ‘Pending’, the days-on-market will stop counting. So, for example, if you’re quoted an average days-on-market for sold homes in your area of 90 days, you can’t assume you’ll be out of your house in 90 days if it takes another 30 days or so for the home to close. You’re really looking at 4 months.

Days On Market Can Be Deceiving

The reason the days-on-market statistic can be deceiving for sold homes is that it only shows days-on-market for homes that successfully closed. Our market, in round numbers, only closes about 50% of homes that go on the market. The other 50% expire or otherwise come off the market without selling. That’s pretty grim!

Days On Market in Different Markets

Sellers Market

Oh, those were the days… I digress! In a good sellers’ market, we were seeing days-on-market of 30-40 days typically. It wasn’t unusual to put a home on the market and have it sold by the weekend – with multiple offers.

Stable Market

When the market is relatively stable we typically see days-on-market of about 60 days.

Buyers Market

In this lengthy buyer’s market we’re currently experiencing, we are now averaging about 150 days on market. But this varies widely with price range. In higher priced homes, it’s not unusual to see a home on the market for 2 or 3 years. In this market it’s ‘dangerous’ to experiment with price. Too high and/or too slow to reduce aggressively and your home may never sell.